Pope Francis in Africa

Pope Francis arrived in Kenya yesterday (Wednesday) evening on his first visit to Africa, that will include trips to Uganda and Central African Republic on 27^th and 29^th November respectively.

The pope’s stop in Kenya, makes 2015 the year that the East African nation has seen its most high profile visits by global leaders in 20 years. Barack Obama in July became the first sitting US president to visit.

The last time a pope visited Kenya was in 1995 when Pope John Paul II travelled to the country on a 16,900-kilometre African tour that also took him to South Africa, Cameroon and Rwanda.

Like Obama, Pope Francis will speak at a university, and then Kasarani Stadium although he will pray at a church in a slum.

The Kenya government announced that it would deploy 10,000 personnel for the Pope’s security. For the Obama visit, Nairobi’s police commander Benson Kibue said that 10,000 officers, roughly one quarter of the entire national force were deployed to the capital, which was mindful of attacks by Somalia’s Al-Shabaab group militants.

“We just hosted President Obama, who could probably be a bigger target,” police spokesman Charles Owino said. “Given our proximity to Somalia and the active al-Qaeda cell there, we cannot take anything for granted.”